The Story Of First Open-Source Vehicle Built By An Online Community

Local Motors is home to more then 4,000 car designers, engineers and enthusiasts. But they spend their time on not just chit chatting, rather, everyone pitches in the expertise they have to design and produce a car, and their first mutual effort is the Rally Fighter.

The Rally Fighter is a very simple but a revolutionary development process; it was designed by community member; Sangho Kim, whereas the rest of the members participated in open development process. The community members worked with Local Members on body design, side vents, interior and accessory design.

Local Motors does not have any designer of their own, the community designs and submits on the website and wait for votes and critique. Once the design detail, whether it is the design of an interior, exterior part or the whole car, gets enough positive responses, Local Motors starts to build it on open source.

Alongside, competitions are also held to design the details; winners’ gets prizes depending on what he designed.

Rally Fighter is just like any open source software, you can say that this is the first open source car that works off-road as well. So like open source software, you can download all the technical data regarding chassis and everything, then you can modify as per your own taste and have Local Motors have it built for you.

With its P-51 Fighter plane influenced design, the Rally Fighter could very well be the coolest looking car around these days, powered by a 6.2 Litre V8 engine producing 430 BHP/424 LBFT mated with an Automatic Transmission powering the rear wheels.

The best thing about Local Motors is that they are not looking for new ideas rather best ideas. If there’s any country in the world that can benefit the most from such a project then its Pakistan. Why? Well if you notice the parts used in the Rally Fighter, you’ll know what I am talking about, for instance, why design an engine from the scratch when you can use any of the gazillion engines produced by Auto Giants? Why make a tail light from scratch when you can use a set from Honda City. Transmission required? Plenty of options to browse through. Need something to open the doors? Mazda Miata’s door handles work very well. Don’t get me started on the seats and belts. You can go over to the Rally Fighter’s gallery and try to guess out the parts they have used on the car.